Friend
by The Die Hard
Summary: This is not a songfic, repeat, not a songfic. Just because someone writes songs about Clark does not make it a songfic.


Friend  
  
Disclaimer: yeah, yeah, so I stole copyrighted characters, so sue me. You want a ten year old computer, fifteen year old car, and twenty year old cat? 'Cause that's all I've got.  
  
Spoilers: The big guy's not from Earth, and he's kind of real strong and fast and tough, and his name is Kal-El. But if you didn't already know that, what are you doing here?  
  
No, this is not a songfic. If you don't recognize the two lines in the first few paragraphs, then I will feel very old indeed. The rest of the lyrics are original. If you don't like them, write your own. I'm no Leslie Fish.  
  
Silver finished the final set with a major power-roll and the audience went berserk. He shook his long hair out of his face and bowed deeply while his drummer turned the drum set into a vibrating window-shattering SOUND that had everyone jumping up and down. Exhausted, he turned to trade hand-slaps with all his people and bask in the sheer energy of the audience. That was all that made it worth doing.  
  
The people. The joy. The sound. The connection.  
  
But when it was over, he really wanted to be back home again.  
  
The others went back to their hotel, physically and emotionally drained, but not, he would bet, too tired to take advantage of some of the sweet young things throwing themselves at the rising hot band.  
  
Not him. He had a newly pregnant wife that he loved with all his heart and soul. He wanted to be with her. But he couldn't stifle the talent and power for song that thrummed in him, making him want to reach out to people the only way he could. The fact that it took him all over the world, exhausting trips and lonely nights, could not be paid for by the money he was raking in. But to deny the gift he had would have driven him crazy.  
  
So he was wandering around a dark city in a dark mood, moping over the dichotomy that denied him a normal life while allowing him such contact with the rest of the world.  
  
"Sittin' in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination...."  
  
Agh. Much too depressing. Simon and Garfunkel was best served on Prozac.  
  
"I said the audience was heavenly, but the traveling was hell...."  
  
God, how pathetic was that? He hadn't even been born when those made the charts.  
  
What the hell was he doing wandering around in a strange city anyway? He should go back to the motel. Pretend that he was living a normal life. Have one lousy beer. Talk with the crew about their next stop. Get some sleep. Call Dana, at least.  
  
And, of course, a gang of kid muggers WOULD pick that exact moment to screw up his temporary peace with himself. Sil froze in panic, and then sighed in defeat. He was going to get killed in a dark alley for no damn good reason except his own stupidity. He almost laughed. If he lived, maybe he'd write a song about it while he was in the hospital.  
  
The man who interposed himself between Silver and the gang -- and where the HELL had he come from? Sil's speed of concentration could freeze a guitar string with a glance, but this guy's sudden here-I-am was past even his reflexes -- was smiling a little, sad a little, serious a little, just-not-there a little. Sil wondered if somebody had spiked his drink. He could read people like a headline, that was how he wrote his songs. But this guy was like ---  
  
Like nothing he'd ever seen before.  
  
The -- man, if not an angel, though he had the features for it -- tapped each of the muggers with his forefinger, and they fell to the ground. Sil wiped his face. Okay, Spock could have done that. But his rescuer didn't have pointed ears.  
  
"Um, thanks, sir."  
  
"No problem. It's not a good idea for a famous figure to go wandering alone, even if this neighborhood. I'm assuming you have a cell phone, if you wish to press charges."  
  
Sil looked down at the unconscious kids -- and yes, the would-be muggers were no more than kids, younger than even he was -- and frowned. "Should I? Like this world doesn't already have enough people who've been screwed over and don't know what else to do...."  
  
"That's your decision, not mine."  
  
"Screw it. Forget it. I'll call the cops later and tell them to keep a look out in the area. I mean, they're still alive, they might try this again and you won't be here, but the next victim might not be so lucky."  
  
The big man stiffened. "I don't kill."  
  
Sil looked at him oddly. "I didn't imply that you would." What had made his rescuer so edgy at that? Seven knives and two guns, that he could see, hadn't fazed the man at all, but the not-even-meant idea that his rescuer's love-taps to the little shits' already-damaged heads might have killed them seemed to frighten him. Hells. Silver had hit kids hard enough to try to kill them himself, growing up. They started it, man, he almost said.  
  
Instead he found himself oddly empathetic with the wrestler-sized guy who was more afraid of what he might have done than what might have been done to him. Decency was something you didn't see much in the so-called 21st century. It was refreshing, like cool water in the morning, as if it could wash away the stains of hatred and horror and the sick feeling of failure and impotent rage that came from watching the news the night before.  
  
"I just meant," Sil went on, relying on his poet's talent for the right words, "That maybe they've learned their lesson tonight. And if not, maybe a few words in a few ears might get them a little bit of help that they wouldn't take otherwise. Not all cops are jerks."  
  
The big man relaxed a little, even smiled a little. "You sound like a pretty understanding guy." For a celebrity, Silver heard him carefully not say. He snorted.  
  
"You don't pack auditoriums unless you can say things that people need to hear. Not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear. Anybody can push cotton candy and kiddie punch-em-out fantasies. I try to get inside their heads to see what's missing."  
  
The big guy was looking at him very oddly, as if he'd said something revolutionary. Okay, so he was probably just a bar bouncer or something, but that shouldn't make him look at Sil as he'd just solved one of the mysteries of the universe. Sil shuffled his feet. "Can I, um, buy you a beer or something? You know, just to get out of here?"  
  
The big man smiled like something warm and pure that Sil thought no longer existed in this world. "Maybe later. I have to get back to work. And you should be getting back to your hotel. I'll walk with you that far, if that's okay with you."  
  
Yeah, like you could stop a bullet if one of those punks decides to come after us, Sil thought. The he remembered how ungodly fast the man had moved. Maybe he was one of those martial-arts masters who broke boards and caught bullets with his teeth. The thought made him snicker. Okay, exhaustion and fear for his life and just plain strangeness could make him as punch-drunk as any amount of beer.  
  
"Fine with me. Want an autograph? And what's your name, anyway? I can't just keep on thinking of you as 'the big guy who knocked out a bunch of punks'."  
  
The man smiled again, a flash of teeth so white in the dark that they had to be replacements. "I like your music, but I don't know what I'd do with an autograph. Maybe you could donate one to charity." They were almost at the hotel's doors, and the man suddenly spun his head around with a worried look. "I have to go. You okay from here?"  
  
Hells, Silver wanted to say, I can practically spit into the lobby from here, but the man's demeanor did not seem to invite levity. "I'm fine. And thanks. But can I have a name?"  
  
The guy was already twenty feet away -- damn, he WAS fast -- but he turned back and gave a quick flash of a nervous (nervous? Yep, as someone well experienced in dealing with the public, Sil recognized that "I don't want to be here" look) grin. "Just call me Kal."  
  
And then he was GONE. Silver stared at the empty space where his angel had been. No, no martial artists or bar bouncers could simply disappear like that. Either the guy was supernatural, or somebody had slipped one hell of a hallucinogen into his bottled water.  
  
He went into the hotel bar to find Tom drinking something with an umbrella in it and Kev snoring in the chair while several girls tried futilely to wake him up. Meri and Kat were already in their room, more power to their good sense. He eyed Tom and then the umbrella.  
  
"Wasn't my idea," Tom muttered. "Some girl sent it over. Who am I to refuse a gift?"  
  
"You mean, turn down a drink." Silver sat and signaled for a dark beer. "Now, speaking of refusing a gift, you gotta hear about the hour I just had."  
  
By the time they reached the next gig, they had "Friend in the Dark" down to where it could be tried out on an audience. Kev tended to place the drumbeat oddly, but all things considered, Silver didn't think you could get any odder than the story that had inspired it.  
  
By their third stand, "Friend in the Dark" was proving more popular than his first hit, "No Turning Back." The audience -- word raced ahead of the tour -- would fall absolutely silent to hear the last line, which he always spoke instead of sang, while his team held up the final crashing chord for that endless five seconds. "And he said, Just call me Cal."  
  
The refrain from "Friend in the Dark" got printed up and posted in the most unlikely places. Silver, the band, took to visiting homeless shelters and juvenile "rehab" homes. The publicity took off like a wildfire. Silver never had to hire a set-up crew again. Roadies came out of the woodwork to paint and wire and hammer. Silver turned them over to Habitat for Humanity after they were done. "Friend" turned into the summer spectacular.  
  
Sil was exhausted, and Kev, who never drank anything stronger than soda, passed out twice during rehearsals. None of them had ever been happier in their lives.  
  
"It's something inside us, that magical spark  
Someone we all can be if we try  
'Cause someone might need us, without knowing why  
So reach out and be someone's friend in the dark."  
  
And then the stranger in the skintight colors and cape was suddenly front-page news.  
  
Silver had canceled any overnight tours, because Dana was due any day now, and they were both more preoccupied with that and their plans than some crazy man who ran around in bright underwear. Until the day Silver took the time to read some of the magazines that had articles about their band, most of which also had stories about the guy from another planet.  
  
Sil said a great many expletives that would have gotten him banned from Comedy Central. "Dana! Did you SEE this?!?"  
  
"Well, of course, hon," his wife said, puzzled, coming in from a long session in the bathroom. "You're on page 32."  
  
"No! Damn! That's not what...." He fought for coherence, touching his wife gently, taking out his frustration by slamming the magazine to the table. "The cover story."  
  
"Well, like, duh." She nuzzled him. "Superman is kind of hard to miss."  
  
"Not Superman." He closed his eyes, dizzy and disoriented like his world had been turned upside down, almost sick with all the sudden emotions, wondering if this was what it had been like for her in the first few months of pregnancy. Was having a new life growing inside of you anything like having a new realization, a new dream, becoming part of you?   
  
It would be way cool if it was. He resolved to ask her later. And to write a song about it. For his son, and for their future. "His real name. Here." He pointed.  
  
"Kal-El," she read, disinterested, not understanding yet. "So?"  
  
"Say it the other way," he said thickly. "Cal."  
  
"Cal -- your friend in the dark?" Her eyes got very wide, and she sat down heavily. "That was -- the person who -- your song was -- that was Superman?"  
  
Silver took a deep breath, and tapped the picture of his impossible rescuer. "That was Cal." He shifted the pronunciation, remembering it with a musician's ear. "Kal."  
  
The concert was a sell-out, as usual, not just because he had promised that all profits would go to worldwide charities for children in honor of his new son. (On the way to the hospital, Dana had mischievously suggested adding "Calvin" to the name they had already picked out. Silver, who at least was old enough to remember the antics of the comic strip character by that name, firmly vetoed the idea.)  
  
He made the limo stop half a mile from the theater, and everyone in the band signed autographs as they walked and promised to get to the rest of them on the way back. He hadn't let the rest of them in on the little addition to "Friend" that he was going to pull. But the energy was enough to have people dancing in the streets all the way to the park.  
  
"Friend in the Dark" finished the first set, but when he spoke the last line, he held the beat so long that even his own band members gave him a puzzled look. "He just said, 'call me Kal'." Using the accent that he now knew to call Kryptonian. He raised his guitar over his head. "Because you don't have to be Superman, to be a friend in the dark!"   
  
He smashed the guitar down over his knee and scattered the pieces into the audience, provoking a small thermo-nuclear riot and a sudden stiffening shock among the fans who had read the magazines and were sober enough to make the connection. The wave of shouted whispers spread out as fast as any light-speed internet rumor. "Cal" was Kal. Superman.  
  
Silver, accepting his role as the star, sat on the edge of the stage while the rest of the band took a well-earned break, sweating bullets and guzzling water while people milled around him and begged for autographs as fast as he could sign them and tried to steal his shoes. He laughed a little when a badged reporter came up and gently moved people back with the ease of long practice. He glanced up to give the guy an offhand thanks.  
  
Oh, hells. If Kal thought those stupid glasses were fooling anyone, he was dumber than one of those green rocks he so seriously didn't need to be around.  
  
"Thanks for the roadie, mister K," he said nonchalantly, and climbed back onto the stage. The guy in the gray suit toed the ground and looked embarrassed and pretty much couldn't have been mistaken for Superman unless you pointed a gun at him.  
  
"HEY, EVERYBODY!" he yelled, whacking his replacement guitar hard for good measure as the rest of the team slid into place. The crowd grew more focused and noisier at the same time. "I WROTE A NEW SONG YESTERDAY! WANNA HEAR IT?"  
  
The screaming was gratifying. Kev hit the drums so hard he probably busted one of them. Meri let a caterwaul on the trumpet that would have brought down the Federal Emergency Management Agency if the crowd hadn't already drowned it out.  
  
He ripped into the opening of "Friend," puzzling many in the crowd and slowing Kev's drum slinging, but shifted in mid-chord to the overture that they had only practiced a few times. What the hell. Youth and energy was intended for things like this.  
  
"My little boy said, daddy, I want so much, but I'm afraid to fall,  
And I stroked him and I told him, don't be, you can do it all,  
There's a dream in all of us, of being what we are,   
And we can be all we want to be, all we need to be, all we have to be  
If we just reach for our star...."  
  
"All We Are" went platinum within a week. The review column from the Daily Planet called him brilliant, and innovative, and a leader and great influence for a generation. He framed the copy of the column that Clark Kent had signed for the band.  
  
He sent a CD back to the award-winning journalist, autographed by the whole band, but added a personal note on a piece of nasty ketchup-stained napkin that he sincerely hoped the guy would burn.  
  
"Damn, get some decent glasses, man." 


End file.
